A deadly shooting rocked Manhattan on Monday evening when a man carrying an M4 rifle opened fire in the lobby of a skyscraper housing major companies like the NFL and Blackstone.
The gunman, identified as Shane Tamura from Las Vegas, killed four people, including an off-duty NYPD officer, before taking his own life.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams revealed Tuesday that the shooter had been trying to target the NFL headquarters, located within the building at 345 Park Avenue, but mistakenly used the wrong elevator bank. Instead of reaching the NFL offices, Tamura went to the 33rd floor, home to Rudin Management, the building’s owners, where he killed another person before dying by suicide.
Investigators found a disturbing note on Tamura’s body. The letter suggested he believed he was suffering from CTE, a degenerative brain condition linked to repeated head trauma, often found in football players. Though he only played high school football in California nearly two decades ago, Tamura expressed resentment toward the NFL in his note and requested that his brain be studied posthumously.
“He seemed to have blamed the NFL,” Mayor Adams confirmed in interviews, explaining the NFL’s presence in the building was what appeared to have drawn Tamura there in the first place.
The violent rampage began around 6:30 p.m. when Tamura exited a double-parked BMW and entered the building’s public plaza armed with the military-style rifle. Surveillance footage captured him marching inside and immediately gunning down Didarul Islam, a 36-year-old off-duty NYPD officer who was on a corporate security detail. Islam, an immigrant from Bangladesh, had been with the force for 3 1/2 years and is being hailed as a hero by city officials.
“He was doing the job we asked him to do,” said NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch. “He died as he lived. A hero.”
After killing Islam, Tamura sprayed the lobby with bullets, hitting a woman trying to hide and two more people. Among those tragically caught in the chaos was Wesley LePatner, a senior real estate executive at Blackstone. LePatner, a Yale graduate with a decade-long career at Goldman Sachs before joining Blackstone in 2014, was remembered as “brilliant, passionate, warm, and deeply respected.”
Blackstone released a statement expressing heartbreak over her death, calling her a beloved member of the company.
Tamura then headed to the elevator, still unaware that he wasn’t heading to the NFL’s floor. Once on the 33rd level, he shot and killed another person in the Rudin Management offices before turning the weapon on himself.
The building, 345 Park Avenue, is a major corporate hub also home to the financial services giant KPMG. Monday’s horror has raised questions about building security and how someone so heavily armed could make it into such a high-profile address unnoticed.
Authorities say Tamura had a known history of mental illness. The rambling nature of his note and the long-standing grudge against the NFL add a disturbing psychological layer to the already tragic case.
While the shooter never made it to the NFL’s actual headquarters, the fact that it was his intended target has sparked concern about safety and the mental health struggles of former athletes, even those whose football careers ended long before any professional level.
This tragedy has left New York reeling, with families mourning loved ones taken too soon in an act of senseless violence. It’s also reignited a conversation around the impact of sports-related brain trauma and how grievances, left unaddressed, can spiral into catastrophe.
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